THE MATHERS
WEIGHED IN THE
BALANCES
BY DELANO A GODDARD M A
AND FOUND NOT WANTING
BOSTON: Office of the Daily Advertiser
LONDON: Office of Henry Stevens 4 Trafalgar Square
April 1870




Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1870 by
HENRY STEVENS in the Clerk's Office of the
District Court of the District of
Massachusetts




To
M L D




Cotton Mather and Salem Witchcraft. By William Frederick
Poole. [North American Review, April, 1869]  Boston, 1869;
8vo, 63 pp.
Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather. A Reply. By Charles
W. Upham. [Historical Magazine, October, 1869] Morrisania,
1869; 4to, 93 pp.
Under this Stone lies Richard Mather
Who had a son greater than his father
And eke a grandson greater than either




THE MATHERS
T IS THE OLD, OLD STORY OF
heroes lifted a great deal too hih
in one century, only to be dragged
a   ldown a great deal too low in another.
For a hundred years after their death the fame
of the Mathers, father and son, rode on the crest
of the waves, The last blast through Mr Dawson's trumpet has come near sending it into the
trough of the sea. Will it ever find plain sailing
and fair weather again?
If it were possible to believe that the iniquity
of motive and of conduct charted upon these two




6
ministers were truly a part of their character; if
it were possible to regard them as the foremost
among the guilty wretches at whose door the
blame for the dark deeds of 1692 must forever
lie, there would still be mysteries in their lives
more confounding than witchcraft, and problems
in the history of their times which could not be
solved. But grant that they were what they
professed to be; grant that they were what they
seemed to be to the generation in which they
lived, and to every generation which followed
till the new canon of criticism was laid down in
1831, and there is difficulty no longer. Make
just allowance for the exaggerations with which
friends and enemies regarded them in their lives,
and while the recollection of their lives was fresh
in all our New England households, and we
have no fear that they will suffer from the ingenious assaults of these latter days.
Contrast with these assaults the testimony of
those who knew them, and who saw their liaht
go out. The funeral honors paid to the shade of
Hector were tame and weak compared with
those of the Massachusetts Province in remem



7
brance of the elder Mather. A mourning multitude that could not be numbered followed him
to the grave. The ordinary language of eulogy
was too weak to express the veneration and love
everywhere felt for the patriarch of the clergy
and the friend of the people. "And they buried
"him in the city of David, among the kings, be"cause he had done good in Israel, both towards
"God and towards his own house."   The son
died five years later. Equal if not greater sorrow followed him to his rest.
"Last Tuesday morning," says  the New England
Weekly Journal of the 19th February, 1728, "died here
the very Reverend COTTON MATHER, Doctor in Divinity
of Glasco, and Fellow ot the Royal Society in London,
Senior Pastor of the old North Church in Boston, and an
overseer of Harvard College, by whose death persons ot
all ranks are in concern and sorrow. He was perhaps
the principal ornament of his country, the greatest scholar
that was perhaps ever bred in it. But besides his universal learning, his exalted piety, and extensive charity,
his entertaining wit, and singular goodness of temper recommended him  to all that were judges of real
and distinguished merit. After having spent above fortyseven years in the faithful and unwearied discharge of a
lively, zealous, and awakening ministry, and in incessant




8
endeavors to do good and spread abroad the glory of
Christ, he finished his course with a divine confidence
and joy the day after his birthday which completed his
sixty-fifth year, being born on February 12, 1662-3." On
the Monday following his remains were honorably interred, "his reverend colleague in deep mourning, with
the brothers of the church, walking in a body before the
corpse. The firstsix ministers of the BostonLecture supported the pall. Several gentlemen of the bereaved flock
took turns to bear the coffin, alter which followed first the
bereaved relatives in mourning, then His Honor the Lieutenant-Governor,the Honorable His Majesty's Council, the
House of Representatives, and then a large train of ministers, justices, merchants, scholars, and other principal
inhabitants, both men and women. The streets were
crowded with people, and the windows filled with sorrowful spectators all the way to the Burying-place where the
corpse was deposited in a tomb belonging to the worthy
amily."
The pulpit did not spare its praise of the departed. "To see them  no more," said the Rev.
Thomas Prince, a learned and useful man, "is no
"mole to see their grave and smiling countenance;
"no more to see their gracious and reviving looks;
"no more to see'their decent and comely carriage;
"no more to hear their lively and pleasant voices,
"their flaming  sermons, their learned, pious,




9
"most instructive and entertaining converse; no
"more to hear or to see them in their pulpits, to
"meet them in our streets, or to receive them in
"our houses; in fine, no more to have their earn"est prayers, their ready help, their wise advices,
"their great and quickening influence in these
"degenerate times. But to lose them all, and to
"lose them forever! 0 inexpressible loss! 0 in"supportable bereavement!"  So Dr Benjamin
Colman, who had been tried as only the saints
can be tried, by the peculiarities in Cotton Mather, which at this late day have been dug out of
their almost forgotten graves for his condemnation, signalized his death by a sermon on the
"Holy Walk and Glorious Translation of Blessed
"Enoch."  "We mourn," he said fervently, "the
"decease from us-not his ascension to God-of
"the first minister in the town, the first in age, in
"gifts and in grace, as all his brethren readily own.
"I might add, the first in the whole province and
"provinces of New England for universal litera"ture and extensive services; yea, it may be,
"among all the fathers in these churches from
"the beginning of the country to this day, of




10
"whom many have done worthily and greatly;
"yet none of them amassed together so vast a
"treasure of learning and made so much use of
"it to a variety of pious intentions as this our
"reverend  Brother and  Father, Dr Cotton
"Mather."
Was this all a sham? Were these ministers of
the truth deceived? Was this man, of allothers,
who had lived in a blaze of light from his cradle,
and at whose grave friends and enemies alike
gathered to cover it with their kind but too generous offerings; who had been forced into the
very centre of affairs while yet a child, who was
never known to have a secret, and could not have
kept it if he had,-was he the designing, plotting,
self-seeking, insatiate hypocrite, which it has
become the fashion to represent him? Are we to
believe that he went about the Province triumphing amidst the assaults of evil angels, glorying in judicial murders, applauding and encouraging them even under the fatal shadow of the
gallows, inventing cases of witchcraft when the
excitement lagged, and using his learning and
his ministry to serve this diabolical passion?




II
Let us not be misunderstood. The actors in
this witchcraft business are not to be judged by
any ideal standard. Dr. Colman  and Thomas
Prince, and the editor of the New  England
Weekly Journal must stand aside. So also must
Robert Calef,-whose writings are not contemporaneous with  Salem  Witchcraft,-when his
testimony comes in conflict with the texture
and spirit of the lives of those whom he has
accused.   If the Mathers  cannot stand  by
their own merits they must fall. The guilt and
the folly of that period they share with the
great and the wise of their time. But if any
trust can be put in human testimony, the charge
of deliberately getting up and ingeniously prolonging that bloody and fearful crusade against
the supposed powers of darkness, cannot be maintained against either of them. The charge as it
has taken shape in Mr Upham's last contribution to the literature of witchcraft, and as it now
stands, is as follows:"By stimulating the Clergy over the whole country, to
collect and circulate all sorts of marvellous and supposed
preternatural occurrences, by giving this direction to the




12
preaching and literature of the times, these two active,
zealous, able and lea ned divines, Increase and Cotton
Mather, considering the influence they naturally were
able to exercise, are, particularly the latter, justly chargeable with, and may be said to have brought about, the
extraordinary outbreaks of credulous fanaticism, exhibited in the cases of the Goodwin family and of the' afflicted children' at Salem  village."   [Historical
Magazine, October, 1869, p. 131.]
The substance of the charge appears again and
again in the course of Mr Upham's ingenious
work, sometimes qualified and explained as above,
sometimes without qualification and with indignant feeling. Let us see how  it applies to the
elder Mather. The affliction of the Goodwin
children  began  in 1688. The cases of Marr
garet Jones of Charlestown, of Mary Johnson at Hartford, of Goodwife Knapp at Fairfield,
of Ann Hibbins in Boston, of Katherine Harrison at Wethersfield, and  many  others, were
long before familiar to the minds of the ignorant
as well as of the intelligent. These trials and
executions occurred in the provinces of New England before Increase Mather had written a line
on the subject of witchcraft, and while Cotton




'3
Mather was in his cradle, and before he was born.
Meanwhile the witch stories then current in English literature and the writings of learned men
who gave countenance to them, were in the hands
of hundreds of New England families, before the
writings of the Mathers were known beyond the
little circle to whose wants they ministered.
During the period just preceding the Goodwin
affliction, the attention of the elder Mather had
been much occupied with the disturbed affairs of
this Province. Early in that year he went to England to lay the wrongs of his people before their
sovereign. He remained abroad upwards of four
years, engaged with the engrossing cares of his
mission. Up to that time the subject of witchcraft had not specially interested him. If he bad
spoken of it or preached upon it, it was doubtless
with the thoroughness and earnestness to be
looked for in one who stood as a watch tower
among his people, and suffered nothing which
affected their happiness or welfare to escape his
notice. The chronology of his published works
shows very little bearing directly or remotely on
the subject to that date. Of the thirty volumes




14
he had printed, one only, and that incidentally,
treated of the mystery of witchcraft. When he
returned from England with the new Governor in
1692, the fanaticism of that year was at its
height. The local ministers and justices in
Salem had done their utmost, and filled the
prisons with accused persons, now  awaiting
trial. If there had been evidence that Increase
Mather had anything to do with producing this
particular outbreak, we think that Mr Upham
would have  found it and used it. He has
found nothing of the kind, and it is useless for
any one  else to make the search. We find
in his "Reply" no such  imputation, unless
the interest expressed by Mr Mather at the assembly of ministers in 1681,-eleven years before,-can be so used against him; and his
interest here consisted in an exhortation to the
ministers to preserve a record of important facts
as materials for history.
The new Governor, finding prompt action imperative, as it seemed, took counsel of the chief
people and officers of the Province, and appointed a special court to conduct the trials, se



'5
lecting for this purpose the deputy governor, and
tor the rest "persons of the best prudence and
"figure that could then be pitched upon." There
were no educated lawyers in that court-there
were none in Massachusetts. But the members of
the court were familiar with affairs, and with
the practice of the English courts in like cases.
The Special Court has been pronounced by recognized authorities as technically illegal; but the
judges acted in accordance with their authority
as they understood it. They lost prestige through
their conduct at these trials, but not the public
confidence; for Stoughton, Sewall,Winthrop and
others continued to exercise high civil and judicial
functions in the Province during their lives.
They were familiar with the writings and decisions of Sir Matthew  Hale and other eminent
jurists, and with  the opinions of wise and
learned men who had made a study of witchcraft for a century before. They appealed for
their justification to the authority of these men,
as well as to the more commanding authority
which came to them with the voice of inspiration-"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."




16
The trials went on apace, the gallows was
glutted with the number of its victims. Under
the pressure of the prevailing panic, no one
could stop them. Increase Mather took the
opportunity to write a book. That was the
resource and entertainment of the Mathers in
all weathers. But this book-Cases of Conscience Concerning Witchcraft-was of unusual
significance. It was written to allay excitement, to refute false evidence, to awake the
slumbering reason, to inspire caution for the
future. It vindicates not only its author, but
the much maligned ministers of Boston, from
the imputations under which the later histories
have placed them.
Mr Upham especially has done injustice to this
book. He does not mention it in his History; he
misjudges it in his "Reply." In the last he says,
"As I had no particular interest in determining'"what his views were,-as a careful study of the
"tract, particularly taken in connection with his
"Postscript, fails to bring any reader to a clear
"conception of them; and its whole matter was
"altogether immaterial to my subject,-I did not




'7
"think it worth while to encumber my pages with
"it." But to one seeking for the truth it seems
to be the very thing with which his pages should
have been encumbered. Increase Mather stands
charged, page after page, with giving a certain
evil direction to the preaching and literature of
the times. The Cases of Conscience Concerning
Witchcraft,-perhaps the most notable of all his
contributions on this subject,-shows that Mr
Mather's influence at that critical moment was
not in the direction which Mr Upham alleges,
but in the opposite direction. The study of that
tract is essential to a clear understanding of the
conduct of the ministers at that time, and as
such it cannot be left out of the case with
fairness, or with a proper regard for truth.
Mr Upham  confesses that he does not understand this book. He does not approach it with
an understanding spirit. It is inconsistent with
the theory to which everything else appears to
be sacrificed.
But where was Cotton Mather all this time?
Mr Upham holds him "particularly" chargeable
with these occurrences, and the later historians




18
with here and there an intelligent and just exception join in the indictment. He was then a
young minister in the twenty-sixth year of his
age, and in the third year of his settled ministry.
He had published at that time a few books, and
a goodly number of tracts, but nothing on the
subject of witchcraft. He did not take that
up seriously till the phenomena happened at
his own door, and the community around him
was groping for some faint light to guide its
steps.  Believing in the reality of witchcraft
with all his canacity for belief, he was zealous
among those who  entered into the wartare
against it. In this belief he was in the company
of Sir Francis Bacon, and Sir Thomas Browne,
and Sir Matthew Hale, and of philosophers and
jurists and statesmen without number on whose
fair fame their connection with witchcraft has
left no enduring blemish. That Cotton Mather
has fared so much worse than these, in the estimation of those who accept the current histories
of the events he took part in, so much worse even
than the judges who conducted the trials and the
citizens who sustained them to the last, may be




19
traced to the fact that his personal importance
at that time has been very much overrated, and
his real connection with the witchcraft trials has
been grievously misunderstood.
He had been much talked about, and overpraised on account of his birth, his reputed learning,
and the hopes which the religious sentiment of the
time reposed in him. He greatly over-estimated
himself; but the same diaries to which he entrusted his most secret thoughts, and which have been
ransacked for evidence to condemn him, show
how earnestly in his hours of fasting and vigil
he sought deliverance from  the proud thoughts
which fly-blowed his best performances, and from
the affectation of preeminence far above what
could belong to his age or worth, and above others who were more deserving than himself. He
had manv ways of doing good, but in his view the
first and most effectual agency was prayer. He
appears among  the Goodwin  children three
months after their afflictions began, but in the
company of other ministers called together for
counsel and prayer. He took one of the children
to his house and endured its strange perform



20
ances for several months, in the hope of testing
again the efficacy of prayer. He visited the wild
Irish Glover woman in prison, and her soul went
to its last judgment upon the winzs of his
prayer. Whatever judgment may be formed of
him from single extravagant sentences detached
from his account of the Goodwin matter, there
is nothing in his conduct then, literally nothing,
which is unbecoming to  his character for
thoughtful, sympathetic and gracious piety.
We come now to the trials at Salem-passing
over much, for we can touch but one or
two points in this voluminous controversy. We
have seen how little warrant there is for the
theory that Increase Mather had anything to do
with the Salem outbreak. Mr Upham  makes
much account of the intimate relations between
him and the new government under Sir William
Phips. Sir William was appointed at his suggestion. Three of the counsellors were of the
Mather church.  The rest owed their official
elevation to the same friendly influence. "It
"could not have been otherwise," says Mr Upham, "than that he should have passed under




2I
"the control of the Mathers." "The Mathers
"were a power behind the throne greater than
"the throne itself." Cotton Mather, in his youthful exultation at the course affairs were taking,
made a foolish entry of the fact in his diary.
He exaggerated his importance in this connection, as his impulses often led him to do; but Mr
Upham takes him  at his word. The annalists
of the time, with the single exception of Robert
Calef who disliked the young man, did not so
regard him. Governor Hutchinson does not
mention him in the account of the Salem delusion. Thomas Brattle, whose stanch disbelief
in the methods of the court would have compelled him to speak of Cotton Mather if he had
had a tithe of the influence which Mr Upham
imputes to him, does not mention him. If he had
then passed from the scene he would have been
forgotten; or if he were remembered, it would
have been as one who played a singular but quite
subordinate part. In spite of his great attainments
and his precocious advancement, his chief and
most enduring title to fame was won subsequently to that brief episode of mystery and terror.




22
But conceding that the power of the Mathers
over the government at this time was so great
as to make them morally responsible for its conduct, let us be consistent, and, in the absence of
evidence to the contrary, hold them responsible
for its conduct when the Governor returned
from his fort-building expedition at Pem-a-quid,
and bade the headsman pause in his deadly work.
MIr Upham  takes it for granted  that when the
Governor returned and found what mischief had
been going on in his absence, he decided to break
from the influence of the Mathers, and run the
government on his own account. The evidence
on which he relies to show this break of sympathy was the next election, in which  tea
anti new-charter men —Mr Upham  calls them
"Anti-Mather men"-were elected. This election, however, did not take place till May,
1693, when the  executions and trials were
ended. The council had consisted of twentyeight members, all "Mather men."  The election
of ten old-charter men did not materially alter
the political character ot the council: and even
Phips was offended at these changes, as appears




23
by his vetoingr the election of Elisha Cook, the
champion of the new-charter men. There is not
a shadow  of evidence  that any  break  of
sympathy occurred. On the contrary, the way
had been prepared for him by the ministers, and
he followed in the course they pointed out.
It can be readily believed that the argument of the Cases of Conscience had been
used by Increase Mather in his extended intercourse with his friends. Immediately upon its
appearance, "the Governor pardoned such as
"had been condemned; the accused were in all
"cases  acquitted; the  confessors  came, as
"it  were, out  of a dream  wherein  they
"had been fascinated; and the afflicted in most
"instances grew easy."  Governor Phius was
dissatisfied with his associates and rebuked them
in his letters to the government at home. "I
"have grieved to see," he says, writing in October, "that some who should have done their
"'Majesties, and the Province, better service,
"have so far taken counsel of passion, as to
"desire the precipitancy of these matters."  Mr
Upham, using every thing for his purpose, adds




24
with astonishing presumption, "This refers to,
"and amounts to a condemnation of, the advis"ers who had influenced him to the rash meas"ures adopted on his arrival."  To whom  it
really referred is made plain by another letter of
a few weeks later date, when the Governor found
it more necessary than ever to justify himself,
in which be said: "Not being versed in law, I
"have depended upon the Lieutenant-Governor,
"who is appointed Judge of the Courts, to see
"that they be exactly agreeable to the laws of
"the English nation, and not repugnant in any
"part."  This was in February, 1693.  The
advice of the ministers recalling the attention of
the court to its obligations in this respect was
printed in. June, 1692, when the frenzy was at its
height.
The ministers were the first who took issue
with the court. To sustain Mr Upham's theory
of the Mathers, it is necessary to break the force
of this important fact. It is necessary to show that
the ministers were ignorant of the ordinary meaning of the words they employed, or that their apparently good advice was a trick, under the cover




25
of which they hoped the prosecutions might be
more vigorously and more zealously urged forward. Think of it a moment. Here were the
ministers of Boston charged with the most solemn
duty which could be imposed upon them: the
minds of the most sober and prudent men in the
province filled with amazement and consternation; those who itwas supposed were gifted with
some judicial knowledge, and "should have done
"their Majesties better service," taking counsel
of passion, and registering the edicts of a community which was "beside itself;" here were
the abused ministers, trying, with such poor light
as they had, to bring the court and the people to
reason. They were themselves the neighbors
and the personal friends of many of the judges,
and they believed that witches who were justly
accused should be put to death. But they believed also in the rights of innocence, and resolved to throw around it all the protection in their
power. If in their sermons, or their written discourses, they had sometimes spoken with exultation of the visible triumphs of the Great Adversary, it was as some patriots lately spoke of




26
heart-breaking defeats in battle-as the preparatives and forerunners of victory. They were bound
to recognize the well-meant efforts of the court
to prevent the spread of witchcraft, and to urge
the speedy and vigorous prosecution of such as
had rendered themselves obnoxious. But language cannot be clearer than that in which they
urge and entreat that the method of proceeding
in future cases should be changed.  They urged
the need of a very critical and exquisite caution
in these and all like prosecutions: an exceeding
tenderness toward those that might be complained of; the exclusion of matters of presumption which were not worthy to be matters of
conviction; the exclusion of noise, company,
and openness that might too hastily expose them
that were examined; consultation with such judicious writers as Perkins and Bernard, whose
books were known to the magistrates as against
the use of spectral evidence; and first of all and
above all, a constant reference to the directions
given in the laws of God and the wholesome
statutes of the English nation. It was in June,
1692, that the Governor and his council asked




27
advice, and the ministers gave them this. Cotton
Mather was  one of the youngest of their
number. He had a gift for "quick and sud"den composares," and he put the results of the
conference into form as it now stands. The liberal and thoughtful men of the Province were
fast coming to this view; but this was nevertheless in advance of them.  Take it altogether, in its relations to the prevailing sentiment, as the expression of men who had no motive in life but the service of their fellow-men and
the glory of God, as they understood it, this Advice is as honorable a memorial to their fidelity
as the wisdom and humanity of that age affords.
It is singular that Mr Upham never printed
this Advice of the Boston Ministers of June 15,
1692, until after it appeared in Mr Poole's Vindication of Cotton Mather, in the North American Review of April, 1869. And now, when it
has become so prominent a part of the record,
Mr Upham is forced, in defence of his theory,
to put upon  it a  construction contrary to
the plain and ordinary meaning of its terms;
to say that it is in Mather's "characteris



28
"tic style" of appearing to say one thing when
he was really aiming to enforce another; that it
was skilfully and artfully drawn; that a careless
reader, or one whose eyes are blinded by a partisan purpose, might not see its real import, and
that it was considered by all the judges, and the
people in general, as fully endorsing the action
of the magistrates, and advising its speedy and
vigorous continuance. We find no proof of this;
we find nothing to sustain a plausible inference
of it in the annals or the traditions of the time.
On the contrary, there is abundant concurrent
testimony to the truth of Mather's own explanation of this document, written a short time afterward, when, if Mather had spoken falsely, Robert Calef could have gathered a cloud of witnesses
to overwhelm him. The manuscript from which
we quote, the original of Cotton Mather, has been
for many years in the possession of the American
Antiquarian Society at Worcester:"For my own part," he writes, "I was always Afraid of
proceeding to Convict and Condemn any person as a confederate with afflicting Demons upon so feeble an evidence
as a Spectral Representation. Accordingly I ever protested




29
against it, both publicly and privately; and in my Letters
to the Judges, I particularly besought them that they
would by no means admit it; and wben a considerable
Assembly of ministers gave in their Advice about that matter, I not only concurred with their Advice, but it was I
who drew it up."
This advice unhappily was not followed. The
court reassembled on the 30th of June and the
trials and  executions went on.  The critical
and exquisite caution  recommended  by the
ministers, the judicious counsel of Perkins and
Bernard, the wholesome statutes of the English
nation, were alike set aside. But the efforts of
the ministers, aided by the inevitable reaction
against the late appalling excitement, were doing
their work among the people. Governor Phips
came home from  his eastern journey, saw his
opportunity, and the trials stopped. Must we
apply one rule to the Mathers in May, and a
wholly different rule in September? Were they
so great in May that they could make and unInake governments, and hold in their mighty
leash all powers temporal and spiritual, and
before the summer was over were they so weak
that neither governor, magistrates, nor people




30
would do them  reverence? If the rule of criticism which is now applied to the Mathers were
applied to the other great and good men who
were contemporary with them; judge them by
detached incidents, by detached passages, torn
from the context of their thought and life, the
best of them could not stand. It would matter
little how  pure, how honest, how consistent,
how humane, how serviceable they were, if they
were to be condemned out of the mouths of their
enemies, or upon the confession of their own
short-comings.
We turn with a sense of profound and grateful
relief from this long "Reply" to the friendly and
judicious portraits of these men preserved in Dr
Robbins's History of the Second Church,where the
historian, speaking not as a partisan or a eulogist,
represents them in the light in which they were
regarded by good men who knew them during
the long and useful period of their lives after the
witchcraft-season passed away,-recognizing the
mixture of good and error there was in them, the
good vastly overbalancing the error, their superficial and venial faults overshadowed by inherent




31
and deeply-rooted virtues. "I trust," wrote Dr
Robbies in 1851, "that truth is dearer to me than
"the reputation of one whom I venerate; and if
"the truth required that the image of one of my
"predecessors should be taken down from the
"sshrine, which it bas occupied for more than a
"hundred years in the church's reverence, and
"publicly dishonored, I could bow the head in
"silence, though I might not sympathize with
"the spoiler, nor be accessory to the deed"
It was not necessary to yield to this humiliation then; and it certainly is not necessary now.
Then, as now, there were powerful and honored
assailants; but our historian did not appeal in
vain to the eternal law that merit shall overmaster the influence of the strong, and disannul the
adverse judgment that seemed, and was intended
to be, most just. The historical record was
clearly and unmistakeablv on his side. To the
courage and critical discrimination of Mr Poole
in our day is due the honor of disentangling the
web ingeniously woven anew round these illustrious men, and placing them before the world in
their true characters once more. We welcome




32
his elaborate, but still too brief vindication, in
our leading Review, which, in spite of Mr Upham's heavy broadside against it, stands, as it
seems to us, unshaken in its material statements,
the nearest approach we have yet had to the
true version of a period and of men that,
after all that has been written about
them for nearly two centuries,
are still so little appreciated and so little
UNDERSTOOD
E N D